Three great things come from Manchester, which have been truly influential on my life: the Guardian, Manchester United and the Fall. I've been away from England for a long time, but I connect to the country through the newspaper, which I have read for 20 years. I follow my football team in there every week and I listen to the Fall all the time. They are the three constants in my adult life.

They've all changed in interesting ways. The Guardian was originally the Manchester Guardian, but is now a truly international thing; Manchester United used to be full of players from Manchester, but is now full of stars from all over the world; the Fall used to have Mancunian members and now has people from everywhere in it. But there remains something Mancunian about all of them. They have kept their integrity, while expanding and evolving.

I grew up in the late 80s in Stafford, working in terrible youth training scheme jobs. I moved to London at 17, and was working in a restaurant as a bus boy-cum-waiter when I met a girl from Australia. She read the Guardian and it seemed to me that's what you had to do to be a grown-up person. So I began to read it too.

After that, I moved to Australia to work on a farm and got the paper sent up to me from Melbourne. I moved all over and did all sorts of jobs. I'm now an actor. I've lived in Hong Kong, Canton, Berlin, Weimar, London, Dublin, Moscow, and three months ago moved to Brussels.

My friends don't really share any English or Irish culture, so the Guardian is almost like a friend.

I can laugh at the letters page, and find out all about national news. It's a good outlet for my ever-receding Irishness.